CHAPTER 27
ALTHOUGH OUR ORDERwas soon ready and the check enclosed, it had to await the tender, which would have to come twice before we could begin collecting specimens to preserve. In the meantime, I determined to work on the catalog. I surveyed the basic sketches I’d done of the creatures in our tubs. They were competent and detailed, reasonably good as far as they went, though I understood little about what I’d drawn and each picture stood alone, unrelated to the others. Bestowing some meaningful organization on a comprehensive volume would be difficult. I was irritated with myself for my lack of attention in my biology classes and wished for a more complete taxonomy than Some Species provided.
What I was sure I could produce, and probably render better than nearly anyone else Miss Dodson knew, were studies that would show an entire tide pool and the arrangement of the creatures within it, perhaps indicate how they coexisted. I began to send the children to Oskar, so he could conduct morning lessons from his bed, while I went to the beach with one of the purloined logbooks under my arm.
My custom was to wear shoes (my kid leather pair, because my work shoes were in the Indian’s care) until I’d slithered down the side of the morro, since its stones were sharp, but abandon them along with my stockings as soon as I reached the sand. I acquired the knack of walking on the packed stuff at the water’s edge, where my feet seemed to skim the surface, leaving a trail that vanished in the space of a wave. When I reached the rocks, I tucked the skirt of my duster into my bloomers—no one would see me, after all—and plunged into the froth, working my way around the spit of rock that marked the end of our beach and the beginning of what I thought of as “her” territory.
The pool lined with urchins was my favorite. I could spend two hours there easily, perched on a certain comfortable rock, drawing and turning in my mind the problems Nature set for me. I asked myself what business these creatures had being bright and beautiful—the dark red and the brilliant blue starfish, the violet sea urchins, the aqua anemones. It seemed dangerous for them to call attention to themselves; it must make them easy prey for those that might want to pluck them out and eat them. Surely it would be safer to meld with the gray and black of the rocks or the green of the weeds. I tried to observe what frightened these creatures and what tempted them forward, the means by which they moved and the ways in which they protected themselves. I thought about their small scope, whole lives passed in a basin, neither knowing nor caring what lay beyond the rock wall beside them. While they stayed still, their surroundings changed; with every tide, old water seeped away and a fresh supply replaced it. Whatever the waves carried in was invisible to me, but it was obviously essential to these creatures.
Inevitably, while I was in this place, my mind would stray to thoughts of that other being who made her home here. As a child, I’d read that Indians could become nearly invisible, so completely could they blend with their surroundings. I often studied the shadows between the rocks, trying to determine whether a dark curve might be a hank of black hair or whether a flutter of light was the movement of the hem of a bark skirt.
More than once, pretending even to myself that I was merely searching for new pools, I made my way down the narrow passage to her cave and stood again in the doorway, examining the silky floor and the shell bowls and the tightly woven baskets. As far as I could tell, the place hadn’t changed since the children had shown it to me. I worried that, wary of our smell, she’d abandoned it, like a bird its nest. I felt inexplicably desolate at the thought.
? ? ?
One afternoon I saw that she had come to my tide pool before me. Arranged in a perfect circle on my rock was a single abalone shell on a leather thong. I knew it was a gift for me.
That day I did no drawing but wandered in widening rings, peering half hopefully, half fearfully into hidey-holes between the rocks and among the piles of logs. I longed to see her; at the same time, I shrank from an encounter. I was terrified that she might be like the Indian I’d seen from the train, shuffling and gaping, dirty and debased. Perhaps she would beg, as that woman had. I wondered if I would appear marvelous and strange to her, and whether she would want to touch my fine hair and the refined fabric of my dress, the way Indians did in books. I searched as long as I dared, knowing that the tide would come in relentlessly and the sun would inevitably dart below the horizon. I found no other sign of her.
? ? ?
I arrived home much later than usual, and I let more time ebb away while I built up the fire in the stove and absently stirred some sort of meat and vegetable in a pan for our supper. When I came into our bedroom with the tray at last, Oskar was standing beside the bed. He’d begun recently to test his leg, hobbling between the two rooms upstairs. He feared it had lost a little of its length in the healing, but since it wouldn’t bear his full weight, he couldn’t tell.
He lowered himself onto the mattress, closing his eyes briefly with the pain of that movement. “Where’ve you been?”
I’d used those same words and peevish tone months before, when he’d not shown up for dinner at the time I’d expected. How changed I was as I stood here wearing my duster, my hair as carelessly pinned as Euphemia’s, barefoot, with an Indian’s amulet hanging from my neck. The only evidence of the Milwaukee girl that my family and friends might have recognized was the coral necklace that had been my Christmas present over a year before. The necklace he’d taken so as to feel close to me.
I’d tucked the abalone shell into my dress while I’d heated our dinner, unsure whether I wished to share it. But the sight of Little O, hurt and helpless, moved me. I remembered following his fingers down the pages of his books as he opened the world for me. I remembered how his eager eyes had appreciated me as no one else’s had. I remembered the rapture of his hand on mine.
“I went to the rocks. Look.” With the care that seemed to befit its import, I lifted the thong over my head and held it out to him.
“What’s this? Something the children made?”
“No. It’s from her. She left it for me.”
His eyes brightened, as I’d known they would. He turned the abalone over several times and ran his fingers along the leather.
It was nothing, really. The children could have made it. Abalone shells come equipped with breathing holes, so she’d needed to do nothing more than thread the leather through one of them and tie a knot. What had impressed me was that she’d given it to me.
But Oskar was curious about the object itself. “What is it used for, I wonder. Is it spiritual or practical?”
“Isn’t it just a necklace?” I reached to take it back. He ignored my hand.
“I doubt it. It may not be meant to be worn around the neck.” He frowned. “Give me your notebook.”
I passed him my catalog-in-progress. He flipped haphazardly through the pages until he found a clean one.
“I’ll need a pencil as well.” He was impatient to begin. “Get me a ruler from the workshop, would you?”
I obliged him in this, too, wondering what information he might glean. What I saw as a token from one woman to another, he perceived as an artifact that might reveal a sliver of humankind’s very nature.
While I looked on, Oskar measured, weighed, described, and traced; he noted that one edge had some dirt clinging to it and another appeared worn. In the end, however, his rendition of the thing on paper didn’t much resemble the actual object.
“Here,” I said. “Let me draw it.” I couldn’t capture the iridescence of the abalone, but my sketch recorded the correct shape and size and the relative roughness and smoothness of the surfaces. In other words, I drew a convincing picture of a shell on a string.
“Do we know anything more?” I asked, returning to the bedroom sometime later with the dinner I’d reheated. He’d apparently finished his examination, and the pendant hung from one of the knobs at the head of the bed.
“I suppose not.” He shrugged. “It’s just one piece, completely out of context. We need a much fuller picture if we’re going to make anything of it.”